• Windows Azure Platform
• Hosting Silverlight applications on Windows Azure Quick Start
• Step-by-step guide to setting up, provisioning, encoding and hosting media for Windows Azure

As per my previous post about the SLS service going away now that the Windows Azure platform is available commercially, we are entering Stage 2 of the SLS grandfathering phase.

The SLS home page has been overhauled this afternoon to provide comprehensive instructions on how to retrieve your SLS content and store it in Windows Azure.

It also confirms the deadline by which this content has to be removed from SLS before it becomes unavailable: January 31st, 2010. Until that time, the SLS admin web site will remain fully functional.

• You can access all of your content that is currently hosted on Silverlight Streaming and also view the file system to retrieve your content locally. For complete instructions on how to do this, please refer to the Step by step instructions for retrieving Silverlight Streaming content section below.
• Stay tuned for more information. Key dates about the new Windows Azure-based functionality, and when the existing service will be taken down will be communicated in the coming weeks.
• You can learn more about the Windows Azure Platform here.

If you have additional questions, please contact us at slsfbk@microsoft.com.

Step by step instructions for retrieving Silverlight Streaming content:

You can directly access the file system of the Silverlight Streaming hosting service. This will be the easiest way to retrieve content directly to your computer. In order to do this, you need to know the Silverlight Streaming Account ID and Account Key used to access the file system. To get this information, do the following:

• Open a web browser and connect to http://silverlight.live.com
• Login with your Live ID.
• Click on Manage Account.
• You will see your Account ID and Key under the Account Information section at the bottom of the page.

You can connect to the SLS file system in a number of ways:

1. Map a network drive

Map to the following network drive, replacing <Account ID> with the numeric Account ID you found by following the steps above.

https://silverlight.services.live.com/<AccountID>/

2. Open as a web folder

• Windows XP, Windows Vista, Windows Server 200 and Windows Server 2003 users must install the latest Software Update for Web Folders.
• Internet Explorer users: open the web folder by connecting to the following URL, replacing <Account ID> with the numeric Account ID you found by following the steps above:

https://silverlight.services.live.com/<AccountID>/

• Other web browsers: copy and paste the following path into the "Run." box on the Start menu:

\\silverlight.services.live.com@SSL\DavWWWRoot\<AccountID>\

• When prompted for credentials, supply your Silverlight Streaming account information that you found by following the steps in the previous section.

Note for Vista users:

For improved performance, disable thumbnails as follows:

1. Click on the Start button, then choose All Programs followed by Accessories
2. Run Windows Explorer
3. In Windows Explorer, click on the Organize button on the menu bar
4. In the pull-down menu, click on Folder and Search Options
5. In the Folder Options dialog window, click on the View tab
6. Under the Files and Folders tree heading, ensure that Always show icons, never thumbnails is checked

3. Mac OS X users

In the Finder, choose Go ->Connect To Server. In the Server Address field, paste the following address, replacing <Account ID> with the numeric Account ID you found by following the steps above.

https://silverlight.services.live.com/<AccountID>/

We’ve been working hard on the Windows Live Messenger Web Toolkit (MWT) which allows you to connect your web site to 330M+ people who use Windows Live Messenger every month! Today we’d like to announce the availability of the Messenger Web Toolkit v3.5 which will enhance the user experience, make it easier to enable sharing via Messenger scenarios on your site (new sharing control), and enable new scenarios (e.g. people who don’t use Messenger will be able to see display pics / names). Specifically, the improvements we have made are:

• User experience: smoothed out the user experience, added a first run experience, expanded the browser support, increased the performance
• Developer experience: reduced the amount of code for you to implement “Share via Windows Live” and the Messenger Web Toolkit is now built on the Microsoft Ajax library.
• New scenarios: Allow people who don’t use Messenger to see display pictures and names of Messenger users.

How did we figure out what are the most important things to get in this release? We listened to and incorporated the great feedback from our partners (some award winning), and were able to come up with new and exciting scenarios.

User Experience: Sexier, faster, supported in more browsers

To bring more people to your site and get them to spend more time there, the user experience needs to be superb. We have made the Messenger Web Toolkit user experience better in many ways:

• Speed: In March 2009 we extended Windows Live Hotmail to use the Messenger Web Toolkit (see the post). By having our bits running at Hotmail scale we were able to gather a ton of information around performance and we’ve acted on it: the MWT will now load faster (full/first time loads and cross page navigation).
• Availability/Reach: added browser support for Firefox 3.5, Safari 4, and Google Chrome 2 - now more people can connect & share with their Windows Live friends on your site.
• Education: One of the most tangible UX changes we’ve made is the first run experience for the Web Bar (a single control you can use if you don’t want to build your own experience). When you first use the Web Bar on a site, a small popup will inform the user they can sign in and tell them the key things they need to know to start connecting and sharing with their friends.

• Looks: we have also updated the web controls and web bar user experience to cleaner

Developers: Easier to add sharing controls and aligned with more tech

We’ve done two things for developers 1) created a new control for sharing which reduces the amount of code required and 2) changed the underlying JavaScript libraries to the Microsoft Ajax libraries.

Sharing control: aside from in-page chat, the next most common scenario we see is sharing via instant messaging. Sharing content is important and it is often a major driver of user acquisition (or user retention). To understand the differences between sharing via a public feed, newsfeed and instant messaging read my post on user acquisition.

The gist is: a user’s friends are more likely to click through to see the content/service being shared with them if it is done via instant messaging and in a conversational way.

To make sharing via Windows Live Messenger much easier we have created a new control, msgr:share. The sharing control reduces the amount of code required to the following:

// include the JavaScript libraries
<msgr:app … insert the code for app tag here… />
<msgr:bar></msgr:bar>

<msgr:share
  message="I am sharing the Messenger Web Toolkit http://dev.live.com/messenger with you"
  picker-label="Select Contacts">
</msgr:share>

The control contains a user experience which will sign the user in (via the consent flow), show the contact selector control, and send an IM with the predefined content.

Aside from visible features such as the sharing control, we have also done some infrastructure work. The Windows Live Messenger Web Toolkit is now built with the Microsoft AJAX Library. With this integration, a Messenger Web Toolkit application works with the standard browser runtime library for Microsoft web development tools. Prior to version 3.5, the Web Toolkit worked with the Script# runtime library named 'sscorlib'. See Microsoft Ajax to determine whether you need to make any changes with your application.

Something for people who don’t use or aren’t signed into Messenger

People using Windows Live Messenger generally chat with people they have ‘friended’ in Messenger. However, sometimes people who use Messenger on a web site may want to chat with other people they know from that web site (who are not their friends on Messenger). We call this feature Application Contacts. The cool thing about this is when I sign into a web site (and grant permission to sign into Windows Live Messenger) which uses Application Contacts, other site visitors can chat with me while I’m on the site, or anytime when I have Windows Live Messenger client open (all the time, like hundreds of millions of other people).

We have made a lot of enhancements to Application Contacts (more information), but the major change is that you don’t need to be signed into the Messenger Web Toolkit for all scenarios. People who are not Windows Live Messenger users (or are not signed into Messenger on the web site) can still see the profile picture and display name of user’s the web site chooses to display. This is particularly interesting for commenting and user profile scenarios. To use this functionality a new Messenger Application Key must be used. This is analogous to a service account. Our documentation on Application Contacts outlines how to get a key.

Previously, if you wanted to show the display pictures/names to a user who wasn’t signed in to Messenger the pics/display name weren’t available. Using the updated Application Contacts functionality you can now show display names and pictures to people who aren’t Windows Live Messenger users (or people who haven’t signed in yet). See the before & after:

Party on

Try out the new bits dev.live.com/messenger and if you have ideas or questions, hit us in our forum.

/Angus Logan, Technical Product Manager

My name is Rob Dolin, I work as an engineer on the Windows Live Social team and I’m honored to have the opportunity to guest blog here at http://dev.live.com/ about one of our latest (and IMHO most exciting) features, our integration with one of the world’s largest social networks, MySpace.

We just announced on the Windows Live Team blog, starting the week of September 14^th, you can add a MySpace “Web Activity” to Windows Live so that you can bring your activities on MySpace like posting photos, updating status, sharing music, or blogging into Windows Live. Heck, if you have a MySpace account (and hundreds of millions of people already do) you can try it right now:

http://profile.live.com/WebActivities/add.aspx?AppID=1140860417
(link will open in a new window)

About Web Activities

With today’s latest partner integrations on Windows Live, we’ll have over fifty web activities that Windows Live customers can add into their Windows Live experience. (To learn more about all the Windows Live partners, check out our Windows Live Team blog). Nearly all of the web activities employ a polling model where a customer enters some basic information about their presence on a website and then Windows Live periodically polls an XML feed of the customer’s activity on that site. In the past, this feed has been in RSS 2.0 or Atom and then for each partner, we have a custom XSLT that maps the elements from the customer’s feed to the data attributes in Windows Live’s system. For example, yesterday, I was out to dinner with my partner and I posted the below tweet:

(from: http://twitter.com/robdolin)

Since I have already set up the Windows Live web activity for Twitter, my twitter feed, Windows Live can go and read my twitter feed (http://twitter.com/statuses/user_timeline/4044361.rss):
<item> 
     <title>robdolin: @ Capital Grille ! New fall prix fixe menu was great value; H said she would hijack a truck for the truffle mac &amp; cheese #seattle #food</title>
     <description>robdolin: @ Capital Grille ! New fall prix fixe menu was great value; H said she would hijack a truck for the truffle mac &amp; cheese #seattle #food</description>
     <pubDate>Thu, 10 Sep 2009 03:31:14 +0000</pubDate>
     <guid>http://twitter.com/robdolin/statuses/3879866454</guid>
     <link>http://twitter.com/robdolin/statuses/3879866454</link>
</item>

And then publish the update on my behalf to my Windows Live profile:
(from: http://cid-3c8ca60f8f925fec.profile.live.com/)

My friends who use Windows Live then see my update from the Twitter web activity in the following places:

· When they use Windows Live Messenger

· When the login to http://home.live.com/

· When they send me email from Hotmail

· When they visit my Windows Live Profile

Challenges with Web Activities

There are two big challenges with this basic polling model of RSS 2.0 or Atom:

1. We need to develop a custom mapping for each partner

2. Each partner needs to have only one activity type or they need a way to communicate what type of activity each RSS 2.0 <item> or Atom <entry> is.

The emerging Activity Streams open standard comes in to help solve both of these problems.

How Activity Streams Helps

Activity Streams helps to address both of the above issues. First, instead of having to do a custom mapping for practically every Web Activities partner, with an open standard like Activity Streams, we can build a single mapping that can be used by multiple partners.

Second, Activity Streams includes <activity:verb> and <activity:object-type> elements so we can identify that one <entry> is a status update and another is a blog entry. Thus, services that have multiple activity types (like MySpace) can have a single feed that includes photos, status, blogs, music, and more.

MySpace Example

Let me show you an example with MySpace.

On MySpace, I’ve gone and uploaded some photos and written a blog entry. You can see these on my MySpace profile:

(from: http://www.myspace.com/tesstingms)

If I authorize it, MySpace will share an XML feed of my activities that uses the Activity Streams elements:

<entry>
        <id>tag:myspace.com,2009:/activity/473185983/BlogAdd/473185983/509685053</id>
        <title type="text">Tess Ting posted a new blog entry: My Thoughts on the Health Care Debate</title>
        <published>2009-09-11T14:54:33Z</published>
        <updated>2009-09-11T14:54:33Z</updated>
        <author>
            <name>Tess Ting</name>
            <uri>http://www.myspace.com/tesstingms</uri>
        </author>
        <link rel="icon" type="image/gif" href="http://x.myspacecdn.com/modules/common/static/img/blog.gif"/>
        <link rel="alternate" type="text/html" href="http://blogs.myspace.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=blog.ListAll&amp;friendId=473185983"/>
        <category term="BlogAdd" label="BlogAdd" scheme="http://activities.myspace.com/schema/1.0/"/>
        <content type="xhtml">...</content>
        <sx:sync id="tag:myspace.com,2009:/activity/473185983/BlogAdd/473185983/509685053">
            <sx:history sequence="1" when="2009-09-11 14:54:33Z"/>
        </sx:sync>
        <activity:actor>
            <activity:object-type>http://activitystrea.ms/schema/1.0/person</activity:object-type>
            <id>tag:myspace.com,2009:/Person/473185983</id>
            <title>Tess Ting</title>
            <link rel="alternate" type="text/html" href="http://www.myspace.com/tesstingms"/>
            <link rel="avatar" type="image/jpeg" href="http://c2.ac-images.myspacecdn.com/images02/75/s_94cbd2c0ed5e4ef0a4bc02a10aecc011.jpg"/>
        </activity:actor>
        <activity:object>
            <activity:object-type>http://activitystrea.ms/schema/1.0/blog-entry</activity:object-type>
            <id>tag:myspace.com,2009:/Blog_Entry/473185983/509685053</id>
            <title>My Thoughts on the Health Care Debate</title>
            <link rel="alternate" type="text/html" href="http://blogs.myspace.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=blog.view&amp;friendId=473185983&amp;blogId=509685053"/>
        </activity:object>
        <activity:verb>http://activitystrea.ms/schema/1.0/post</activity:verb>
    </entry>
    <entry>
        <id>tag:myspace.com,2009:/activity/473185983/PhotoAdd/855905/9132545</id>
        <title type="text">Tess Ting added a new photo to the My Photos album.</title>
        <published>2009-09-11T14:50:50Z</published>
        <updated>2009-09-11T14:50:50Z</updated>
        <author>
            <name>Tess Ting</name>
            <uri>http://www.myspace.com/tesstingms</uri>
        </author>
        <link rel="icon" type="image/gif" href="http://x.myspacecdn.com/modules/common/static/img/photo.gif"/>
        <link rel="alternate" type="text/html" href="http://viewmorepics.myspace.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=viewImage&amp;friendID=473185983&amp;albumID=855905&amp;imageID=9132545"/>
        <category term="PhotoAdd" label="PhotoAdd" scheme="http://activities.myspace.com/schema/1.0/"/>
        <content type="xhtml">...</content>
        <sx:sync id="tag:myspace.com,2009:/activity/473185983/PhotoAdd/855905/9132545">
            <sx:history sequence="1" when="2009-09-11 14:50:50Z"/>
        </sx:sync>
        <activity:actor>
            <activity:object-type>http://activitystrea.ms/schema/1.0/person</activity:object-type>
            <id>tag:myspace.com,2009:/Person/473185983</id>
            <title>Tess Ting</title>
            <link rel="alternate" type="text/html" href="http://www.myspace.com/tesstingms"/>
            <link rel="avatar" type="image/jpeg" href="http://c2.ac-images.myspacecdn.com/images02/75/s_94cbd2c0ed5e4ef0a4bc02a10aecc011.jpg"/>
        </activity:actor>
        <activity:target>
            <activity:object-type>http://activitystrea.ms/schema/1.0/photo-album</activity:object-type>
            <id>tag:myspace.com,2009:/Photo_Album/855905</id>
            <title>My Photos</title>
            <link rel="alternate" type="text/html" href="http://viewmorepics.myspace.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=user.viewPicture&amp;friendID=473185983&amp;albumId=855905"/>
        </activity:target>
        <activity:object>
            <activity:object-type>http://activitystrea.ms/schema/1.0/photo</activity:object-type>
            <id>tag:myspace.com,2009:/Photo/855905/9132545</id>
            <title>
            </title>
            <link rel="alternate" type="text/html" href="http://viewmorepics.myspace.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=viewImage&amp;friendID=473185983&amp;albumID=855905&amp;imageID=9132545"/>
            <link rel="preview" type="image/jpeg" href="http://c3.ac-images.myspacecdn.com/images02/14/s_cb0b48037818485bb99d521a4051ed2a.jpg"/>
        </activity:object>
        <activity:verb>http://activitystrea.ms/schema/1.0/post</activity:verb>
    </entry>
    <entry>
        <id>tag:myspace.com,2009:/activity/473185983/PhotoAdd/855905/9132542</id>
        <title type="text">Tess Ting added a new photo to the My Photos album.</title>
        <published>2009-09-11T14:50:47Z</published>
        <updated>2009-09-11T14:50:47Z</updated>
        <author>
            <name>Tess Ting</name>
            <uri>http://www.myspace.com/tesstingms</uri>
        </author>
        <link rel="icon" type="image/gif" href="http://x.myspacecdn.com/modules/common/static/img/photo.gif"/>
        <link rel="alternate" type="text/html" href="http://viewmorepics.myspace.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=viewImage&amp;friendID=473185983&amp;albumID=855905&amp;imageID=9132542"/>
        <category term="PhotoAdd" label="PhotoAdd" scheme="http://activities.myspace.com/schema/1.0/"/>
        <content type="xhtml">...</content>
        <sx:sync id="tag:myspace.com,2009:/activity/473185983/PhotoAdd/855905/9132542">
            <sx:history sequence="1" when="2009-09-11 14:50:47Z"/>
        </sx:sync>
        <activity:actor>
            <activity:object-type>http://activitystrea.ms/schema/1.0/person</activity:object-type>
            <id>tag:myspace.com,2009:/Person/473185983</id>
            <title>Tess Ting</title>
            <link rel="alternate" type="text/html" href="http://www.myspace.com/tesstingms"/>
            <link rel="avatar" type="image/jpeg" href="http://c2.ac-images.myspacecdn.com/images02/75/s_94cbd2c0ed5e4ef0a4bc02a10aecc011.jpg"/>
        </activity:actor>
        <activity:target>
            <activity:object-type>http://activitystrea.ms/schema/1.0/photo-album</activity:object-type>
            <id>tag:myspace.com,2009:/Photo_Album/855905</id>
            <title>My Photos</title>
            <link rel="alternate" type="text/html" href="http://viewmorepics.myspace.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=user.viewPicture&amp;friendID=473185983&amp;albumId=855905"/>
        </activity:target>
        <activity:object>
            <activity:object-type>http://activitystrea.ms/schema/1.0/photo</activity:object-type>
            <id>tag:myspace.com,2009:/Photo/855905/9132542</id>
            <title>
            </title>
            <link rel="alternate" type="text/html" href="http://viewmorepics.myspace.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=viewImage&amp;friendID=473185983&amp;albumID=855905&amp;imageID=9132542"/>
            <link rel="preview" type="image/jpeg" href="http://c3.ac-images.myspacecdn.com/images02/22/s_e15bb4f34a324a9fbc4c23d518230ff6.jpg"/>
        </activity:object>
        <activity:verb>http://activitystrea.ms/schema/1.0/post</activity:verb>
    </entry>

(The above example XML is of a blog entry and two photos. MySpace supports a ton more activity types and they have great documentation on this on their developer wiki: http://wiki.developer.myspace.com/index.php?title=Standards_for_Activity_Streams. The Windows Live web activity integration includes these MySpace activities: posting a blog entries, posting forum topics, updating status, posting photos, getting tagged in a photo, posting a song, adding a profile song, adding a profile video, and RSVP’ing yes to an event.)

Now, if I’ve connected the MySpace Web Activity in Windows Live: http://profile.live.com/WebActivities/add.aspx?AppID=1140860417, Windows Live will periodically poll my Activity Stream XML feed from MySpace and when there are new entries, Windows Live will publish these new MySpace activities to my Windows Live Profile:

(from: http://cid-e16138db6f261cbd.profile.live.com/)

Reading More

If you’re interested in learning more about Activity Streams, you should feel free to visit the working group’s website: http://www.ActivityStrea.ms/ and the group’s wiki: http://wiki.ActivityStrea.ms/.

If you’re interested in developing more with Windows Live, I’d encourage you to start at http://dev.live.com/ and http://msdn.microsoft.com/.

Thanks very much for reading all of the way through ;) and I’m looking forward to working with more of you to enable our mutual users to share their activities with their friends across the web. All the best—

--Rob Dolin
Engineer, Windows Live team
http://robdolin.spaces.live.com/

P.S. I want to extend a personal thank you to Monica Keller and the folks on the MySpace Engineering team who were great to work with.

Currently, we do not have a schedule that I can publicly share for when we will release full Production support of OpenID for Windows Live ID users, but rest assured that we are working actively to provide OpenID functionality to all of our 500+ million Windows Live ID users!

In addition to multiple entry-points, and being able to explain unique vs. static identifiers to end users - the main challenge was aliasing:

In the CTP, Windows Live ID users were required to create an OpenID alias (such as "http://openid.live.com/john") attached to their account, and then to use that alias not just at the OpenID relying party site, but also as the way to identify themselves to the Windows Live ID OP. When arriving at the OP sign-in screen, users were required to enter their OpenID alias (instead of their normal Windows Live ID user name) plus the password (or one of their other associated credentials, such as an Information Card) from their main Windows Live ID account.

We had envisaged that using an alias for OpenID sign-in could provide some separation of the two identity networks. However, the usability model for this approach has turned out to be unfeasible and/or just plain confusing to users!

Read more about it along with the other lessons.

• Live Framework CTP (Services, SDK & Tools)
  The Live Framework will be integrated into the next release of Windows Live. Stay tuned to dev.live.com for more details in the future.
• Contacts Control (JavaScript)
  As an alternative, please use the UI Controls from Messenger Web Toolkit.
• CTP Tools/ASP.NET Controls (Contacts, MessengerChat, IDLoginStatus, IDLoginView, SilverlightStreaming)
  As alternatives use:
  • The UI Controls from Messenger Web Toolkit for Contacts and Messenger Chat
  • The Windows Live ID Web Authentication Service to replace the IDLoginStatus Control

If you are a Live Framework technology preview user, we ask you to please download any data and/or code from the service prior to September 8^th as well as remove your devices from the service. If you are using any of the controls, we ask that you please remove them from your site prior to September 8^th. For more details see the Q&A at the bottom of this post.

There's also some updates on the future of the Bing ASP.NET Map Control CTP (formerly Virtual Earth ASP.NET Map Control CTP); to learn more, please visit the Bing Maps Blog.

Please note that Live Mesh will continue to remain available to end users and is not affected.

Thanks again to everyone for your participation and feedback. Stay tuned to this space for updates and more details on the platform capabilities of the next release of Windows Live.

Q&A

Q: I'm a user of the Live Framework CTP, do I need to do anything prior to the Live Framework CTP being taken offline?
A: Microsoft asks that if you have any data and/or codebase/solutions running in the Live Framework CTP that you please move it to a local hard-drive. If you have several devices that are "claimed" as part of your Live Framework CTP account, we ask that you please remove any of these devices. To do this, go to each device that you have as part of your Live Framework CTP service, click the Start Menu, then Control Panel, then Add/Remove programs, select Live Framework CTP, and uninstall. This will remove your device from the Live Framework, and retain any files and/or folders you had synchronized on the device itself.

Q: Will I still be able to access my Live Framework CTP solutions after this preview is taken offline?
A: No.

Q: Will Microsoft retain any data and/or solutions that are currently available on the Live Framework CTP?
A: Microsoft will not retain any data and/or solutions that are a part of the Live Framework CTP offering.

Q: What is changing in the Live Services developer portal (live.azure.com)?

A: The ability to create Live Framework-enabled web sites and Mesh-enabled web applications will be removed.  It will not be possible to edit the settings of Live Framework-enabled web sites and Mesh-enabled web applications and Analytics because these applications won't be available any longer.  Live Framework CTP tokens will no longer be valid and can be discarded.

Q: What will happen to my Live Framework-enabled web sites and Mesh-enabled web application Application IDs?

A: Your Live Framework-enabled web sites and Mesh-enabled web application Application IDs will get re-imported the next time you log into the portal after the CTP discontinuation. You can either use these Application IDs to connect to the Live Services Existing APIs or delete them.

Q: What will happen to my web site if I am using the Contacts Control?

A: Starting September 8 the contacts control will render on your site with an error message. Users of your web site will see the following statement: "This control is no longer supported, please contact your site administrator for more information." Starting September 8 the control will no longer be available or render.

Q: What can I use in lieu of the Live Framework Contacts resource?

A: You can still use the Windows Live Contacts API Beta.

Q: What can I use in lieu of the Contacts Control?

A: You can use the contacts picker control that is part of the Windows Live Messenger Toolkit.

Q: Will the permissions granted to my site by users for accessing contacts data be lost?

A: Yes. Users of your web site will have to go through the Contact Picker control's permission flows to re-establish access to their contacts data from you site.

Q: What will happen to my site if I am using the ASP.NET server controls from Windows Live Tools?

A: The ASP.NET control will keep working but we are no longer supporting it going forward. If you are using it in combination with the Contacts Control then the Contacts Control will stop working on September 8 (see above for more details). All other underlying controls (ID Login, Messenger, Silverlight, and VE Maps) will continue to work.

Q: Are the Silverlight Streaming Services being discontinued or just the wrapping ASP.NET controls?

A: Only the controls which wrap the Silverlight Streaming Service will be discontinued.

Q: What can I use in lieu of IDLoginStatus and IDLoginView Control?

A: You can make use of Windows Live ID Web Authentication service. Only IDLoginStatus and IDLoginView control is being discontinued.

Q: What will happen to the Windows Live Web Role template for Windows Azure?

A: The template is no longer supported and will not work with the current version of Windows Azure Tools.

Q; By Microsoft taking the Live Framework CTP offline does this mean that my LiveID account also will be unavailable?
A: You can continue to use your LiveID account to access the other Windows Live services you care about, including the Live Mesh beta.

Q: If I want to stay informed on updates regarding Live Framework, where should I go?

A: Visit http://dev.live.com to stay up to date with Live Framework.

Q: What role do developers play in the future development of Mesh technologies?

A: This is an exciting journey for all of us and your commitment and feedback helps us build the best possible offerings for our customers and for you. Our commitment to the great developer community is stronger than ever, and we are looking forward hearing more of your feedback in the future.

Imagine a great consumer experience that provides visual search and the ability to share photos with your friends via IM – that is what Photobucket landed this week by using Silverlight to create a rich visual search and combining it with Windows Live Messenger to make it social. Photobucket visual search is a great example of how the activity of searching for images can be turned into a rich and compelling social experience, taking full advantage of one of the most widespread social sharing behaviors with Windows Live Messenger. Photobucket made use of the Windows Live Messenger Web Toolkit UI Controls which provides a skinable and flexible way to interact with the 320+ million people who use Windows Live Messenger monthly. The UI controls can be easily integrated (see Interactive SDK) in web sites and makes a lot of the heavy lifting (coding JavaScript) only required if you want a fully custom experience. To get more in-depth details of how the implementation was done see Angus Logan's blogpost.

Video: Live Services Hackathon

And here is a video by Angus Logan, demo'ing even more functionality from the Messenger Web Toolkit:

A bit of background on Live Messenger:

We won't bore you with too much marketing fluff, but you should know that Windows Live Messenger is the world's most popular IM network with over 320m users and we've opened up our APIs so that web applications can integrate with our service to provide cool experiences for their users.  To find out more about the Messenger APIs, check out http://dev.live.com/messenger

The term The Social Web has been increasingly used to describe the rise of the Web as a way for people to interact, communicate and share with each other using the World Wide Web. Experiences that were once solitary such as reading news or browsing one's photo albums have now been made more social by sites such as Digg and Flickr. With so many Web sites offering social functionality, it has become increasingly important for people to be able to not only be able to connect and share with their friends on a single Web site but also to take these relationships and activities with them wherever they go on the Web.

With the recent update to Windows Live, we are continuing with the vision of enabling our 500 million customers to share and connect with the people they care about regardless of what services they use. Our customers can now invite their contacts from MySpace (the largest U.S. social networking site) and Hi5 to join them on Windows Live in a safe manner without having to resort to using the the password anti-pattern. These sites join Facebook and LinkedIn as social networks from which people can import their social graph or friend list into Windows Live.

In addition to interoperating with social networks to bridge relationships across the Web, we are also always working on enabling customers to share the content they are find interesting or activities they are participating in from all over the Web with their friends who use Windows Live services like Hotmail and Messenger. Customers of Windows Live can now add activities from over thirty different online services to their Windows Live profile including social networking sites like Facebook, photo sharing sites like Smugmug & Photobucket, social music sites like last.fm & Pandora, social bookmarking sites like Digg & Stumbleupon and much more.

We are also happy to announce today that in the coming months, MySpace customers will be able to share activities and updates from MySpace with their Windows Live network.

Below is a screenshot of some of the updates you might find on my profile on Windows Live 

These recent announcements bring us one step closer to a Social Web where interoperability is the norm instead of the exception. One of the most exciting things about our recent release is how much of the behind-the-scene integration is done using community driven technologies such as the Atom syndication format, Atom Activity Extensions, OAuth, and Portable Contacts. These community driven technologies are moving to ensure that the Social Web is a web of interconnected and interoperable web sites, not a set of competing walled gardens desperately clutching to customer data in an attempt to invent Lock-In 2.0 

As we look towards the future, I believe that the aforementioned standards around contact exchange, social activity streams and authorization are just the first steps. When we look at all the capabilities across the Web landscape it is clear that there are scenarios that are still completely broken due to lack of interoperability across various social websites. You can expect more from Windows Live when it comes to interoperability and the Social Web.

Just watch this space.

Hey, Angus Logan here, I'm at Web 2.0 Expo in San Francisco - there is a great vibe and lots of action. I've been spending time with and learning a ton from some of the open stack crew, Joseph Smarr, David Recordon, and Chris Messina. We've been talking about the technology, adoption, and when Microsoft (we) will roll our preview Open ID and Portable Contacts endpoints into production (nothing to announce right now).

Microsoft is a proponent of open standards through our work in the Open ID foundation and the Open Web Foundation. As these open specifications continue to mature, services such as RPX are great because they provide a stepping stone for developers.

I’m excited to see the announcement that RPX now consumes Windows Live IDs.

RPX delivers both user experience for identity provider selection and a translation layer between many proprietary and standardized protocols used by identity/resource providers.

End-users can spend their time in so many places on the web. The battle for attention is harder than ever. The downside of having limitless choice is the tax of signing in and telling websites about yourself. RPX makes it possible to sign in using one of the many identities a person already has - this includes authentication and profile information (first name, last name, etc.)

Web site owners just need to go to www.rpxnow.com and create an account. As end user data is being shared you need to create a Windows Live App ID and you tell RPX the details of your app ID and specify a privacy statement. You can also use the authentication page co-branding to make the experience somewhat smoother for your end-users. After this you implement some UI on your website, and you should see higher end-user satisfaction and conversion for signing in and profile information.

The Live Services APIs used are Windows Live ID Web Authentication and the Windows Live Contact API. Web Authentication is one of the options third parties have for becoming a relying party of the Windows Live ID identity provider/Microsoft federation gateway. It is built using standard web technologies and techniques such as browser based redirects/form posts.  The Windows Live Contact API in this case is being used as a profile API as it exposes the "owner record" of the Windows Live user. To gain permission to the profile & address book Windows Live ID Delegated Authentication (DelAuth) was used. DelAuth provides a few unique controls for users to select certain objects to be shared, and the duration of the access.

Below are some screenshots from www.ladygaga.com which uses RPX:

(Windows Live ID, sign in and delegation stuff you've all seen before)

Hey - Angus Logan here, back from MIX09 in Las Vegas. We had a whopping 8 sessions about identity/safety, messaging and the Live Framework at MIX - below are links to all of the sessions about Live Services, which you can view online.

Overview of Sessions

Messaging / Presence : On Wednesday we announced the Windows Live Messenger Web Toolkit, which is a set of controls and libraries that enable you to connect Windows Live Messenger users and their friends with users of your Web site.

• Keiji Kanazawa gave an overview of the Windows Live Messenger Web Toolkit
• Chris Parker showed 5 of the top scenarios we identified for a site to become more social & sticky by being enabled with the Windows Live Messenger Web Toolkit.
• Angus’s pick! Jordan Snyder from Effective UI shared her experiences in integrating the Windows Live Messenger Web Toolkit into a slick Silverlight application for a major photo sharing web site (more news coming soon.)

Identity & Safety : Microsoft is in a unique position to be running one of the largest services in the world, with over 500 million people signing in every month.

• Jorgen Thelin gave an overview of the different aspects of the Live Identity Service and how we are making it available for web developers, companies that sell solutions and also organizations that want to adopt cloud services.
• Angus’s favorite :: John Scarrow talks about the things you need to think about when running a massive high scale service in terms of people abusing your service. “the terrorists are no longer in their camps in the desert, they are moving into apartment buildings (i.e. your web site)”

• Ori Amiga gave an overview of the Live Framework all up
• Arash Ghanaie-Sichanie went deep on what meshifying a web app really means
• Angus’s pick! Gregory Renard from Wygwam had the most fun session and showed a great new tool the Live Framework Explorer for Visual Studio.

Full list of sessions with links

Identity & Safety
	Protecting Online Identities Learn how Microsoft provides a range of identity solutions for helping developers more easily build seamless user experiences that include Federation, Authentication, UX Customization, Open Standards, Open ID and more.
	Protecting Against Internet Service Abuse Come hear how Microsoft protects content and identities as servers and users become more distributed worldwide.
Messaging & Presence
	<3 the New Windows Live Messenger Web Toolkit for Social Websites See how to add IM to a site with the Windows Live Messenger Library and UI Controls, and how to build new relationships around content with Messenger social capabilities. Also hear how top sites and marketers are using the social connections of Windows Live users to grow and …
	Five Killer Scenarios for the Windows Live Messenger Web Toolkit Come learn how to make your site more engaging with the Windows Live Messenger Web Toolkit.
	A Shot of Windows Live Messenger and a Pint of Microsoft Silverlight Learn how to add instant stickiness and drive new users to a Web site while uncovering the hidden social network within. Hear how Effective UI quickly and easily added these capabilities to its customers' existing Microsoft Silverlight projects using the Windows Live Messenger …
Live Framework
	Live Framework and Mesh Services: Live Services for Developers Learn about the Live Framework including new and future services (such as Mesh Services), protocols, APIs, and tools which enable your Web, service, or client applications to access, store, and synchronize user data with Live Services, obtain audience analytics data, and more.
	Mesh-Enabled Web Applications Come learn how to extend your existing Web applications and get them to live and breathe within Live Mesh. See how Mesh-enabled Web applications can be accessed from anywhere through a Web browser as well as run locally (and offline) on a user's desktop. Also see how Web …
	Lighting Up Web and Client Applications with Microsoft Live Services Learn how to use Live Services to light up rich client applications or to extend Web applications to the desktop. See how to easily access Live Framework to produce and consume data that automatically syncs with the cloud and the devices in a user's digital life.

For users of the Web, being able to connect to friends and build social networks is becoming more important every day. Today, we are releasing the Windows Live Messenger Web Toolkit--a set of controls and libraries that enable you to connect Windows Live Messenger users and their friends with users of your Web site.

 See a video demonstration.

Windows Live Messenger is the most used instant messaging services world wide, with more than 320 million monthly active accounts in over 50 countries and in 36 languages.

For Web site owners

The Windows Live Messenger Web Toolkit provides Web sites with three core benefits:

1. User acquisition: Your Web site visitors can help you build your audience on the fly by inviting their friends to your site through instant messaging.
2. Deeper engagement: The toolkit allows people on your Web site to easily chat with their Messenger friends or others on your site, keeping them their longer.
3. Return traffic: Bringing people back to your Web site is difficult when the only weapon in your arsenal is email. Using Messenger functionality you can break through the inbox chatter and remind people why your service is so great.

For the people

The Windows Live Messenger Web toolkit provides these key benefits to your users:

1. See your friends in more places: Sometimes using a new web site is a lonely experience. You want to go where everybody knows your name, or at least you want to be able to find your friends. The toolkit allows your users to easily find their friends who already use the site, or connect with existing friends and bring them to the party.
2. Meet new people and choose if you want to stay connected to them: Want to connect with others who share a common interest? Discover and connect with someone who is watching the same videos or commenting on the same content. Be discovered and contacted by someone who lives in the same town or likes the same music. Earn yourself a new friend.
3. Express yourself across the web: Windows Live Messenger users invest a lot of time changing their status messages, display pictures and display name to reflect their mood. Now, this personal expression can be shared with others on your Web site.

Show me the bits

Web developers can choose the level of customization by using the pre-built and skinnable Web Bar control, using the 16 modular UI Controls, or building the entire experience from the ground up using the Windows Live Messenger Library.

We have many cool samples in multiple languages (C#, VB.NET, PHP, Ruby, Java, Python and Perl) that show you how simple it is to integrate the Windows Live Messenger Web Toolkit. So, no matter what your style, you've got the help you need to kick start your development and get these new capabilities on your Web site in a snap.

Getting started

The easiest way to begin is to use this tool, which provides a step-by-step guide and sample code to get you started.
See a video demonstration.

For people familiar with the Windows Live Messenger Library

We've heard from developers that they "want to control the entire experience, just give us APIs and we'll build it". To provide the best experience for everyone using Windows Live Messenger there is a certain baseline of functionality that needs to exist. Building this functionality was a lot of effort and while some great implementations were built, most developers felt the effort required was a lot so they asked for tools to make it easier for them to develop faster.

We decided to deliver a set of 16 JavaScript/HTML controls that can be skinned using CSS and extended using the Windows Live Messenger Library. These controls make it very fast for Web developers to let their users connect and share with their friends no matter where they are.

From v1 to v2.5 we also got some great feature requests and we have delivered a bunch of these, included:

• Automatic Sign In: Once a user opts into using Messenger on the site by using the "softer" opt-in screen, they can be automatically signed in by the Web site even if they use a different PC.
• Cross page state - you can now use this on content portals where users click between pages without losing their signed in status.
• Performance - the web based performance has been increased and should be similar to the Windows Live Messenger client when connected via HTTP.
• Connecting people who aren't Windows Live Messenger friends, yet - People have connections/relationships all across the web, we have now made it possible to for users to take these relationships and get to know the people more via IM (both web and client) and then if the user so chooses add that person to their WLM contact list. Anyone who opts into using Messenger on their website makes it possible for the website to play "match maker" for contacts and show the presence of people on any IM client (Web/phone/Xbox/desktop).

Try it out

You can go to dev.live.com/messenger today to add this to your web site.

The Live Framework team has released the April 2009 CTP update for the Live Framework.  This update includes performance improvements, bug fixes, and improved functionality. For the details on what's new, see the release announcement on the Live Framework team blog.

To learn more about the Live Framework, see dev.live.com/liveframework.

As some of you have noticed, and taken the time to report either by email or in the forum, the Silverlight Streaming service experienced an unplanned outage yesterday afternoon. As of this morning everything should be up and running again.

A bit more information about this issue:

Direct access to videos and video upload functionality was impacted, videos were still accessible via iframe invocation. For that reason applications were mostly not impacted by the problem, as most of them would be instantiated using the iframe invocation method.

The administration web site itself was not affected.
The data store was not affected.

Next month, at the MIX09 conference, we’ll be releasing some cool new bits. As such, we’ll be deprecating a bit of our current functionality later this month (details below). Thanks to everyone who has tried our current technologies and given feedback; please know that it has helped us in developing the richer functionality we’ll be providing at MIX and beyond. While we can’t say much more about what we’ll be releasing right now, we think you’ll love this new stuff and we can’t wait to get it in your hands. So watch this space as we get closer to the middle of March for more info.

So, what’s being deprecated?

The Windows Live Photos Control and the presence/messenger capabilities of the Windows Live Contacts Control (JavaScript and Visual Studio versions) will no longer be available come Feb 27^th.

What alternatives do you have?

• For presence or Windows Live Messenger capabilities, you have a great set of alternatives. You can use one of the various Window Live Messenger APIs that are already available.
• You can continue to use the Contacts control to display contacts, but the ability to launch the Windows Live Messenger client or to show presence information will no longer be available. To continue to use the Contacts control to display contacts, all you need to do is to remove the devlive:view= "tile" or devlive:view= "tilelist" parameter from the <contactscontrol> element on your Web page.

Again, thanks to all who have used these controls and who have offered valuable feedback. We look forward to hearing how you like our next releases.

--Live Services Team

Hey - this is Angus Logan from the Live Services team! Yesterday was Safer Internet Day and I was at the Open ID UX summit. There are two things close to my heart, internet safety and user experience, and I wanted to take a moment to post some things we've done recently at Microsoft to help make the internet a safer place:

1. An update on enabling data portability by working with the largest library developers to make address book portability safer for people using many web sites (see previous posts on screen-scraping).
2. A new Live ID feature we are releasing to make the user experience on websites which use Windows Live ID for authentication better and more seamless (see previous posts on phishing resistance)

Safer Address book portability - legitimizing leading libraries

Over the past year we have been working with the largest websites (and of course with those that are not so big) in the world to provide a two-way street for address book portability. Throughout this effort we found most developers like the efficiencies gained by using libraries such as Octazen's Contact Importer. The downside of efficiency is a safety tradeoff, and asking end-users to share their Windows Live ID credentials with other websites is less than ideal (see password anti-pattern).

To this end we worked with the Octazen development team to use the Windows Live Contact API which puts the user at the center of their online experience by using Live ID Delegated Authentication. The user does not need to share their credentials and can select what information and how long it can be accessed by the requesting web site. The Octazen library for websites running PHP is available now and additional platforms (.NET / Java) will be available in the future (demo).

Other advancements in this space such as Portable Contacts and the innovation Plaxo discussed yesterday at the Open ID UX Summit which drove a 92% signup & address book conversion are very exciting but by working at the existing library vendor level many websites will implicitly get safer without any additional effort.

Safety isn't just threat vectors - it's also the experience

One of the consistent pieces of feedback we got from web sites which let users sign in using Windows Live ID Web Authentication was end users were being jarred by the user-experience shift once they clicked "sign in" and were taken to the Live ID authentication page.

For a security expert it makes perfect sense, only type in your credentials where you sourced them from (and you need to see the address bar). But for an end user you end up wondering "Where did the pretty site go and what am I doing here, was it a mistake?" and never return to the site.

Whilst balancing the need for instant recognition and desire for a consistent experience throughout the entire sign in flow we've developed a sign-in and sign-up experience for Windows Live ID which can be co-branded/themed and portions can be customized by web developers.

In the next few weeks a web site owner will be able to self service register their relying party, upload their configuration file and any requests to login.live.com for that Application ID (which redirect to a specific site) will have this co-branding/customization made available.

We have also made advancements in "vanilla" authentication screens designed to be used as a popup.

Below you can see regions which can be "themed" are blue and the areas which can be changed are yellow.

Sign In (login.live.com)

Sign Up

NOTE: This customization is not available for the Open ID authentication flow as that is designed to be consumed by any website not provisioned.

Two separate issues were identified and and addressed on the live site on Monday afternoon and Tuesday noon respectively. The Silverlight Streaming service should be back to full functionality as of Tuesday 1/27 12:30 PM PST. Thanks to everybody who took the time to report the problem. Renewed apologies for the inconvenience it caused all of you.

Even though the admin web site is up and running, there were several reports of videos or applications not being served out of the Silverlight Streaming service during the week-end. They have been escalated and are being investigated.

The impact is that such features as the video preview page or the application test page are not rendering properly, and that the third party applications relying on the service are not fully functional.

There is no immediate ETA for resolution. We apologize for the inconvenience and appreciate your patience on the matter, as well as your continued support of the service while it is in Beta.

The Silverlight Streaming publishing plug-in for Expression Encoder has been updated to support the new Silverlight 2 templates that were added in Expression Encoder 2 SP1. It is available from the Microsoft Download Center here.

Interesting blog cross-references:

• James Clarke's post on the Expression Encoder blog
• Keith Combs's post on his Technet blog

As we finally have time to perform the upgrade work to make the Silverlight Streaming service work with the Silverlight 2 RTW bits, it is important to note that your applications hosted in Silverlight Streaming will also have to be updated to use the Silverlight 2 RTW bits.

There is good information on ScottGu's Blog describing how to upgrade your applications from Silverlight 2 Beta 2 to Silverlight 2 RTW smoothly, so they do not break when Silverlight Streaming is updated. Note that this should not impact your Silverlight 1 applications hosted in Silverlight Streaming.

This service maintenance work is scheduled in the next few days, I will be posting updates on this blog to keep you informed.

As you have undoubtedly noticed, the Silverlight Streaming service has not yet been upgraded to work with Silverlight 2 RTW. This will be done shortly. Until this work is completed, here is a short FAQ about the side effects:

• Silverlight Streaming will work with Silverlight 1 and Silverlight 2 Beta 2 only
• The Silverlight Streaming upload stack relies on a Silverlight control, so the Browse button will be disabled if you have Silverlight 2 RTW onlyour machine
• This will be true for both the Manage Applications and Manage Videos scenarios

We apologize for the inconvenience caused by this delay, and are working to perform the upgrade as soon as possible.